REVIEW: Kitano Strives to be Different with "Kikujiro"

(indieWIRE/5.25.00) — It would be understandable if anything Takeshi Kitanocame up with was disappointing to his American fans, as his only two filmsto receive U.S. distribution, “Fireworks” (1997) and “Sonatine” (1994),which were released just months apart in the United States in early 1998,happen to be his masterpieces.

Those two films, which elevated his already strong body of work to make himone of the world’s most important directors to emerge in the 1990s, wereless single explosions than movies that stop and start, with stretches ofheartbreaking beauty intermixed with sequences of startling, ugly violence.They reinvented the yakuza film, yet as free and exhilarating as his styleis– unconcerned by normal cinematic conventions — there is a formal polishworthy of the classic Japanese masters, particularly Yasujiro Ozu and KenjiMizoguchi. Kitano’s work wants us to feel, in as exact a manner as possible,the fragility of life and the finality of death.

And so we come to “Kikujiro,” which in Kitano’s own words is an attempt to“try and make a film no one would expect from me.” In one sense this istrue; this comedy about a retired yakuza who travels cross-country with ayoung boy to find the boy’s mother has the feel of an improvised holiday, away of blowing off steam. It’s as if Kitano took great pains to avoid theintense, demanding cinema he customarily produces.

Kitano, of course, plays the yakuza. The boy, Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi),lives with his grandmother and doesn’t have many friends. One day, after hisclassmates disperse for the summer, he finds a picture of his mother, whomhe has never met. The boy becomes obsessed with finding his mother, and afriend of his grandmother’s (Kayoko Kishimoto, who turned in a touchingperformance as Kitano’s dying wife in “Fireworks,” here getting a change ofpace as a gum-smacking make-up-smeared dame) suggests her husband, theyakuza.

The gangster has to reconcile his tough-guy image to become more fatherly(easier said than done; he begins by gambling away what little money the boyhas at the racetrack) while the child must come to terms with the factthat, ultimately, he is alone in the world.

Kitano’s visual gags, even in his “serious films, have always smacked ofsilent comedy, with their elegant blocking and precision timing. So acorrelation between “Kikujiro” and Charles Chaplin‘s “The Kid” – also abouta man of the streets taking a child under his wing — is particularly apt.But Kitano overloads his narrative with these pranks — such as a woman whojuggles fruit, two tough-looking bikers who dress up as fish or aliens toamuse the child – and leaves story development by the roadside.

Admittedly, some of the predictable sequences, including taking the kid to ahostess bar and working con games on roadside travelers, are irresistible.Better still are some unexpected scenes in which the yakuza downrightignores the kid, leaving the child to be puzzled, upset and maturingquickly. But there is a tedious predictability to the proceedings and,astonishingly, the first outright boring stretches in a Kitano film.

Kitano, who was widely known as a comic performer for years before he becomea director, and even now is said to star in no less than seven televisionsitcoms and talk shows (“I do completely foolish things, like run around thestudio half-naked,” he once said) has made comedies before – the absurdist“Getting Any Lately?” (1995) and “Kid’s Return” (1996). So despite hisreputation as a maker of character-driven yakuza films that are at onceamusingly detached and thrillingly intense, it appears he will always driftback to comedy.

“Kikujiro,” then, isn’t really a departure. Nevertheless, with a few quiet,moving scenes and a lovely ending, the film betrays an artist’s touch, nomatter how hard Kitano tries to make it look easy. Perhaps this was exactlywhat he needed emotionally, so here’s hoping his next project, shooting inLos Angeles and co-starring Omar Epps, will display the disciplined master’sviewpoint so lacking in this one.

[G. Allen Johnson is the film critic for San Francisco Examiner. He hasalso written for the Bloomington Herald Times, Pasadena Star-News, LosAngeles Daily News and Indianapolis Star.]